


Balloons

by kittymsmith



Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Cute, Dorks in Love, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Silly, dorky, they're at the fair and elliott keeps wandering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:49:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23845498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittymsmith/pseuds/kittymsmith
Summary: Natalie and Elliott go on a trip to the fair.
Relationships: Mirage | Elliott Witt/Wattson | Natalie Paquette
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	Balloons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RavenIsaWrittingDesk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavenIsaWrittingDesk/gifts).



> A gift for my dear friend.

“Elliott! Elliott? Oh, where is he?” Natalie hopped in the middle of the crowd, sending up a cloud of fine fair dust at her feet. She was somewhere in the food stall section, the most likely location for one Elliott Witt to go, but the crowd was like a school of fish, all so tightly together and moving so quickly, and for some reason everyone grew taller when she lost him. It was the second time that day and really, she would be more annoyed if she wasn’t concerned with finding the imbécile, since he was the one with all the money and their phones. She huffed and started squeezing her way through people, calling for him and cursing him in the same breath. Not at the fries stand, or the cotton candy, or the place that somehow deep-fried nachos.

“I am going to kill him,” she decided aloud, though she was looking directly at a child when she said this and quickly removed herself before said child’s tall scary papa could reach her. She came to the ticket vendor. “Pardone, have you seen m-“

“Hey, aren’t you a Legend?”

She puffed a stream of air from her lips, flipping her bangs, then put on a smile. “Oui, oui, mon ami. And I’m looking for-“

“Mirage?” The vendor was grinning. Elliott had mentioned how one of his favorite parts of being a Legend was that people were pretty much always happy to see you, and Natalie had been a little embarrassed to have not noticed, because people were rarely unhappy to see her.

“Yes, have you seen him?”

“Down that way,” he pointed to the right, the only thing in that direction being a large, bubble shaped building. “He signed my arm. Dudes pretty chill. Hey, would you…?”

“If you have a marker.”

The vendor grinned wider and pulled out a black marker. Natalie signed his arm, below Elliot’s scrawl, and then moved on towards the big bubble. On her way there she spotted a balloon vendor and got an idea, purchasing a yellow balloon and a blue one and then continuing into what turned out to be a big vendor convention of some type, with different sections dedicated to different crafts, like leatherwork, jewelry setting and local art. Elliott was found in the garden section, deep in a desert themed area full of cacti and succulents that Natalie was pretty sure made the balloons nervous. She tapped him on the shoulder, and he whirled around, grinning upon seeing her. “Nat! Babe! Lookit these little guys!” He held out his hands, small pots with a tiny cactus in each one. Natalie quickly tied the yellow balloon around his wrist, double knotting it. He stared. “Uh?”

“Stop running off!” She started tying the blue balloon to her own wrist while he stood, hands still out, baffled. He was so cute she hadn’t even sounded as perturbed as she was and maybe that was part of the problem, but oh well. He was too cute for either of their goods. “This is the second time I’ve lost you!”

“I, heh I’m sorry I just, well this guy gave me a pamphlet about this place and then I found plants.” He gestured weakly with the cacti; his balloon wobbling dangerously close to a saguaro. “I’ve always kinda wanted to, you know, try keeping something alive?”

She smiled slightly. “You barely keep yourself alive.” That was a lie, he was probably the healthiest of all the Legends, herself included. She’d spent the ages between 16 and 22 living off takeout and TV dinners, when she remembered to eat, but Elliott? He, like, _cooked._ He’d been horrified at the contents of her fridge the first time he came over.

“I know, but, they’re cute! They also have succa-suc-succ…soft water boys.”

“I have no idea what you’re trying to say, chou.”

“I don’t either.” He laughed at himself and then, having apparently decided he was going to purchase the cactuses, carefully navigated his balloon around the pokey pillars of death to the register. “Why’d you tie this to me, again?”

“So I can find you easier.” She lightly backhanded his side. “You’re no better than a toddler.”

He pouted. “You wound me.”

She smiled at him, taking the change from the vendor and shoving it in one of the pockets of Elliott’s fanny pack-blue with golden apples to compliment his outfit- while Elliot was handing over the cacti to be boxed. “This is terribly convenient, if very dorky.”

“It’s part of my charm.” He winked. “I think they call it “Dad Chic”.”

“You’re not a dad, though.”

“Excuse me, I have a beautiful wiener dog named Saucy and I resent the implication that he is anything but a loving son.” He thanked the rather amused clerk for the plants and held the bag in one hand, Natalie’s hand in the other.

She giggled. “Of course, my bad.”

They weaved through the crowd, balloons bobbing around them, the strings sometimes crossing so they hooked together, much like the couple’s hands. Natalie smiled when she thought of the fat little sausage dog who liked very much to sleep in the walkway and would wait, very patiently, for them to finish dinner so he could lick the plates. Elliott even had a set of steps so Saucy could climb into bed. She had a cat, Barbara, but she wasn’t nearly as charming unless you had chicken in hand.

Still, she found herself perusing a stall filled with custom knitted pet clothing, seriously considering a blue bonnet that Barbara would hate. Elliot leaned more towards a leatherworking stall, and she was thankful she bought the balloon, as she lost him twice more from there. They’d come to the fair for the rides and strange food, but Elliott was in a building with a whole square mile full of weird stuff to buy and armed with a credit card, so Natalie resigned herself to browsing and sometimes stopping Elliott’s strange purchases. (She didn’t stop him from buying the suit of armor, though, which made her wonder if they both needed an adult).

She stopped to look at a display of miniature tesla coils and only caught Elliott’s sleeve a moment before he vanished. “Hey!”

“Sorry! Sorry,” he stopped, and she opened up the fanny pack, digging around for her wallet.

“Goodness gracious, Elliott, if I knew you’d keep wandering like this I would have worn jeans with pockets!”

“Your jeans don’t have pockets?” He cocked his head, to any outsider looking like he was just staring at her crotch in the middle of the fair. She flicked the pocket, only the rim of it pulling out, not even enough to put a penny in. “Why did you buy them?”

“Because they’re cute,” she sighed, passing a fifty to the vendor. Sure, she could make the coils herself, but…no.

“But, but you don’t have pockets. Why would they make it without pockets?”

“To make women buy purses.”

He opened his mouth then paused, finger to his lip like a scientist who’d just had a breakthrough. “Oh my God.”

“You never thought of that before?”

“Never!”

She chuckled, taking the bag from the vendor and again walking with him. “Well, it’s a thing.”

“That’s so _stupid._ ”

She laughed. “It is.”

They went about their day, exiting the big bubble building and wandering back out to the main part of the fair, the rides and food and games. Natalie kept having to run to Elliott’s fanny pack for her phone, or money when she spontaneously wanted even more cotton candy (“Seriously, how are you not dead?” He asked after her third trip) or the couple occasions she ran out of tickets while playing other games during Elliott’s quest for a giant wiener dog plush at the milk-bottle toss, or whatever the game was called.

Eventually Elliott seemed to tire of it, or at the very least got an idea, because when she returned from one of the more ridiculous stands with deep fried ice cream, he’d vanished from his spot near the ring toss. She looked around and didn’t spot his balloon and huffed. But he’d not wandered off the last few hours so she gave him a benefit of a doubt and stood where he had been, guessing (hoping) he had just gone to the bathroom. Of course, fifteen minutes meant otherwise, and by the time she saw his yellow balloon bobbing over the tops of the crowd, she was cross. _At least he came back,_ she thought, hand on her hip. “Elliott, where the hell did you go?”

He jumped-she had _that tone-_ and held up his hands defensively, small bag in hand. “I’m sorry, it took longer to find than I thought.”

“Find what?”

“This.” He handed her the bag and she looked at it suspiciously, passing him what once had been fried ice cream and was now bulbous, sloshing blobs of dough one pin prick away from becoming an unpleasant soup. “It’s kinda dumb,” he added as she began to reach into the bag. Then she pulled it out, and all at once her annoyance disappeared, replaced with a bubble of laughter. “Ha, yeah, it’s du-“

“Non, non, Elliott, I _love_ it!” She said through her giggles, squeezing his arm reassuringly. She immediately fastened it around her waist, looked down and laughed again. It was blue, with electric yellow lightning bolts, almost matching Elliot’s gold apples. “Where on Earth did you find it?”

He was grinning like a doofus, pulling out her cash and phone, which she took and shoved into the pockets. “There’s a whole stall that just sells handmade fanny packs. I found it when I, heh, wandered earlier.”

She shook her head. “Only you could find something like this,” she said, getting on her toes and giving him a peck on the lips, making him laugh in relief, and thinking to herself that she would never have guessed she’d one day find a fanny pack romantic.

**Author's Note:**

> Chou means cabbage and is a french endearment.   
> So "chugga chugga choo choo" is "chugga chugga cabbage cabbage"?
> 
> No I didn't know how to finish this
> 
> ihopeulikeitbritt


End file.
